It’s easy to feel like you’ve got a lot done in a day when you spend time on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. It’s that false sense of productivity that comes from accomplishments of dubious value – like levelling up in Farmville by teaming up with friends to grow patty pan squash (11 million people play Farmville), exchanging tweets with Nathan Fillion of the TV show Castle (670,000 followers), watching clips of last night’s dancing contest, or beating the top score in Word Twist or Bejeweled.

It’s hard to justify pulling yourself away from hundreds of neighbors who want you to send them fuel or houses or pineapples so they can keep digging for buried treasure or building a civilization or slopping their pigs. The sense of urgency to win the next round, support a friend who just posted a sad status update, find out what your favorite celebrity is doing at this moment, or watch an amazing video that all your friends are excited about can easily beat out that growing sense of impending doom about not getting an assignment done.

But social media doesn’t have to be a “waste of time”. There are lots of ways these sites can be used to help with productivity, motivation, and learning.